With a background spanning industrial design, economics, and journalism, Principal Ruchika Modi brings a multifaceted understanding of the ways in which cities function to her architectural practice. Modi’s experiences living and working in Mumbai (then Bombay), New Delhi, and San Francisco have also influenced her nuanced view of urban planning and design, inspiring her passion to find architectural solutions to a range of relevant issues, from sustainability to inequality. At PAU, Modi sets the firm’s vision in partnership with Creative Director Vishaan Chakrabarti, including shaping the firm’s diverse portfolio of projects, and overseeing all aspects of the design process.

Currently, Modi is leading the design team for the FAA’s new sustainable air traffic control tower prototype, which will be adapted to replace over 100 aging towers in regional and municipal airports across the nation. She is also project lead for Princeton University’s newest residential college, Hobson College, as well as for the master plan and design of forty-one buildings as part of a new mixed-use development in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. She spearheaded the design of the iconic Domino Sugar Refinery in Brooklyn, an adaptive reuse project transforming the historic nineteenth-century factory into offices with a mixed-use ground level, opening in the fall of 2023.

Modi holds a Master of Architecture degree from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, where she was awarded the Charles McKim Prize for Excellence in Design / Saul Kaplan Traveling Fellowship, the William Kinne Fellows Prize for Study and Travel Abroad, and the Lucille Smyser Lowenfish Memorial Prize. Modi received her BA in economics from the University of Delhi and a BA with distinction in interior architecture from the California College of Arts, San Francisco. Her work has been exhibited at the Center for Architecture in New York, the International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam, and the China International Architectural Biennale in Beijing.